


The Other Side of Insanity

by SEMellark



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Blood, Blood+ AU, M/M, Violence, think of this as pre eremin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3151574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SEMellark/pseuds/SEMellark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Eren loses himself to the monster he was born to be, the only solace to be found is in the comforting arms of the one who has sworn to always protect him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Side of Insanity

**Author's Note:**

> You may or may not have had to see Blood+ to understand this. I'm not really good at gauging this kind of thing. If you read it and have questions, I'll be happy to answer them!
> 
> And if you haven't seen Blood+, I highly recommend it.

Someone is singing.

It is a quiet, simple melody, possibly meant to lull someone into a faux sense of security, distracting them from the fact that death is close at hand.

But he is special, or perhaps different in the worst possible way. The song does nothing to calm him.

In fact, it whispers to him in ways that it does not to others.

The song does not put him to sleep. It wakes him up and encourages him to kill.

His victims cry out as his blade pierces their flesh, slicing them clean through, but he can barely hear them over the drone of his own thumping heart, or the insistent voice singing in his head.

Blood hits him in warm spurts, and he laps up what he can whilst trying to locate the sound. The sky is dark, but there is light all around, flickering light that burns white hot and consumes whatever it touches. Something tells him to stay away, and he does, if only because he has more important things to do.

The body before him falls with a muted thud, and he steps over it, eyes narrowed as he surveys his surroundings. There was much activity when he awoke, beings shouting gibberish in voices too loud that he was forced to silence them with a single swing of his blade, slicing open the exposed columns of their throats until their annoying voices fell away into gasps punctuated by sweet gargles of blood.

The red color only spurred him on. And when he sees a flash of it in the trees, he reacts, sprinting toward the source at a speed that seemed to have frightened his other victims.

This creature is different, big and hulking in ways the others were not, with sharp claws and a gaping maw and eyes as red as the blood that stains _everything._ When it growls in warning, he snarls right back, filled with an all-consuming rage that he cannot begin to comprehend.

On instinct, he slices his hand open on his blade and charges the huge creature, dodging its swiping claws to the best of his ability, though they score across his flesh in such a way that only serves to fuel his anger.

He stabs the creature in the center of its chest, cutting off a large roar that almost seems to shake the ground. Slowly, its body begins to splinter and crack, and it disintegrates altogether around the sharp edges of his blade. He bares his teeth, filled to the brim with warm satisfaction, and spits on the ashes of his kill.

The singing has stopped, but he does not need it to continue with his spree. He can smell more creatures like the one he just killed within the trees, beyond the burning light, and he is going to kill them all, run them through, hack them piece by bloody piece until –

A noise catches his attention, and he spins, gripping the hilt of his weapon tightly.

A creature much like the ones with the annoying voices from before is standing in the grass some distance away, observing him.

He watches it warily, because he feels that this one is different, somehow. It appears docile with its pale, defenseless flesh and clawless hands, but its smell is similar to the hulking creature from before.

Different but similar. Beyond his comprehension. Definitely a threat.

It takes a step forward, lifting one of its claw-less hands, and he snarls, taking a step back and pointing his blood-soaked blade at the intruder. This one is not running like the others. It does not even smell remotely of fear. Nothing about it is triggering his instinct to kill.

Its mouth moves, forming those noises that he does not understand, and he huffs in annoyance, shifting his weight, wanting to keep moving but uncertain of how to approach the situation. The creature’s eyes narrow slightly, but his expression is not one of violence or even anger.

He cannot find a word to place the emotion he is seeing and smelling. Most words have abandoned him. He does not need them to kill.

He charges, fed up with waiting, lifting his blade up and sticking it straight out, anticipating a clean kill. The creature stiffens but does not move, and it is then that he notices another oddity.

While it smells like the red-eyed creature, this one’s eyes are a different hue altogether.

They are blue, like the sky.

Blue like his favorite dress-shirt, given to him by Erwin.

Blue like the ocean, the ocean that Armin used to tell him stories about when they were children, when he was filled with wonder and longing and Armin would tell him stories of the world outside his home, the home he was not allowed to see.

Armin. His first Chevalier. His partner. His best friend.

_Armin!_

He stops just before the creature, panting so hard his shoulders heave with each inhale, the tip of his blade hovering mere inches from its heart.

It _is_ Armin. And he almost ran him clean through like he had the chiropteran.

Eren gasps, dropping his katana and staggering back a few steps, filled with horror. “Armin.” He croaks, and his Chevalier relaxes, that frightfully resigned look leaving his eyes.

“Eren – “ The blond man starts, but Eren suddenly feels fatigued and falters, barely able to stay standing on his trembling legs.

Armin catches him before he hits the ground, and they huddle in the blood-soaked grass together, Eren feeling safer than ever now that his trusted friend is there with him. He’s terribly confused and has no idea where they are. Everything smells of blood and fire, and while he can scent more chiropteran in the area, he has no energy left to hunt them.

“What happened, Armin?” Eren demands. “Where are we?”

The other man sighs. Eren is concerned to find that his friend looks more tired than he’s ever seen him. While he looks no different than when Eren last saw him, the young man knows that some time has passed since his last meeting with his Chevalier. His hair is pulled back from his face by a band of sorts, and Eren sees a smudge of blood just below his cheekbone.

He reaches up to wipe it away with his thumb, but it’s just as bloody as the rest of him and only worsens the mark marring Armin’s features. Feeble an attempt though it is, Armin still smiles.

“We’re in Vietnam.” He explains, and Eren frowns. “The Americans have started a war here.”

Eren knows what that means, and he dares not hope as he says, “I doubt their citizens were told why.”

“The average person in America believes they are fighting the spread of communism, not chiropterans. This secret is still our own.”

Eren feels slight disappointment, though he’d known before Armin spoke what his answer would be. Decades have possibly gone by and this fight is still Eren’s own. His passion for killing chiropterans has not dissipated in the slightest if previous events are anything to go by, but it’s difficult, keeping his mission a secret from the general public.

He’s been doing this since the eighteen hundreds. One would think it would’ve gotten easier by now.

“I heard singing.” Eren murmurs, studying Armin’s face carefully. Over the years, his friend has perfected his ability to guard his expression and keep his emotions to himself. In the flickering light caused by the fire, it’s impossible to discern Armin’s expression. “Is… Is Levi here?”

“He was.” Armin says grimly. “That’s why they woke you up so early.”

“It’s early?”

“You’ve only been asleep for seven years.” Eren blinks, astonished. Something like that has never happened to him before, and as smart and practical as Armin is, he’s surprised the Chevalier agreed to donate his blood to wake Eren up before his long sleep ended on its own. “They used my blood to awaken you prematurely, but – “

He trails off, and Eren’s stomach heaves as he remembers, turning his head to stare out across the battlefield, the carnage he created.

Eren is horrified by the sheer quantity of dead soldiers that he sees. He remembers how they tried to run from him once they realized that he wasn’t on their side, but nothing can stop Eren when his cursed blood takes over. They woke Eren out of desperation for him to fight his own brother, and their efforts proved futile and cost many good men their lives.

Eren hadn’t felt a single ounce of remorse when he slaughtered the men. But he feels it now, leftover from every murder, the grief cutting through him as his katana cut through those men.

“Don’t look at them.” Armin says gently, taking Eren’s face in one hand and urging him to look away from the carnage, to focus once more on his friend’s eternally youthful face. “It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t yourself.”

“But I – “ Eren thinks hard. Something nags at his thoughts, and he thinks of the fire. The person who set it… was a farmhand. He’d been walking home in the dark, torch in hand, and Eren had happened upon him as he chased the fleeing soldiers. He’d killed him, and many others like him. “There was a village. I killed civilians, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.” Armin says. He knows better than to hide the truth from his King. “But like I said. It wasn’t your fault. It was too early for you to wake up. I shouldn’t have gone along with the General’s plan. I’m so sorry, Eren.”

Eren shakes his head, struggling not to cry. He’d killed children in his half-awakened state, toddlers that cried for their mothers, who Eren then killed as well. They had done nothing wrong but were still caught in the crossfire. And it was all for nothing. Eren is spent, and his brother is nowhere to be seen.

Levi is crafty. He knew better than to show himself when Eren was on a rampage, instead keeping to the shadows, lulling his younger brother further into the frenzy with his killer’s song.

Eren remembers hearing it for the first time, back when he was a naive child over a century ago, escaping from underneath Erwin's and Armin's watchful eye as he searched for the source of that sad melody. He found it eventually, a voice locked in a high tower on the far reaches of the property, and he’d foolishly given the voice a name before releasing it from its confines.

Just like now, Eren started the fire that consumed his home and killed Erwin, the only father he’d ever known. He foolishly let Levi go, and the humans are paying for his mistake ten times over.

Eren and Levi are creatures called chiropteran. They are not human, although the brothers take human form, and while they can eat human food, the real sustenance lies in blood. Their own blood is special, as Armin well knows, and it kills and gives life both.

But unlike his older brother, Eren chooses to fight the other chiropteran, uses his special blood to kill them before they can kill the humans. It is the only way Eren can atone for his sins.

He must kill the chiropteran. And he must kill Levi, no matter the cost to himself. Armin knows this, and it’s most likely why he allowed the Americans to attempt to awaken Eren from his slumber. His guilt over the situation must rival Eren’s own.

“Where’s Mikasa?” Eren asks. His eyes are beginning to grow heavy, and he knows he doesn’t have much time left.

“She’s in Germany. A group of chiropteran broke into an orphanage and killed over fifty children and their caretakers. She’s been hunting them down for little over a month now.”

Eren nods. He knows how Mikasa feels about orphans, being one herself. She sympathizes with them, for she had to watch her own parents die after the bombing of Hiroshima when she was seventeen. She wandered the remnants of her home for days, starving and injured due to radiation.

Eren and Armin only found her because they’d been called upon by Japanese members of the Red Shield to take care of chiropteran who were making easy pickings out of the survivors of the bombing. The boy and his Chevalier had no allegiance in strictly human wars and helped wherever they could when chiropterans were involved.

Mikasa was close to death when they happened upon her, and Eren had been drawn to her for whatever reason. He hadn’t wanted to see her die, so he fed her his blood as he had fed Armin all those years ago. He’d stopped time for her, preserving her life and yet taking it away all the same.

She became his second Chevalier, and his most intense one at that. Whereas Armin is more the brain of their operation, Mikasa adds to Eren’s muscle. Her body, forever seventeen, has absolutely no limitations, and she protects Eren with a fierceness that rivals even Armin’s, who is Eren’s oldest confidant.

Even if Mikasa is inexplicably stronger than Armin, the blue-eyed man is downright terrifying if Eren’s safety is called into question. Together, they work to protect their King, and Eren doesn’t doubt that no harm will come to him with those two at his side.

Levi may have more Chevaliers to his name, but Eren has the best, and he would fight his brother just to prove his point if Levi weren’t such a cruel bastard that deserved the most gruesome death possible.

But that is neither here nor there.

Eren sighs, resting his head against Armin’s chest, listening to the strong beat of his heart. He used to do the same when they were children, lying atop Armin in the gardens as he listened to the steady thumping, agonizing over the mortality of his best friend.

But they’re the same now. Armin’s heart is as alive and useless as Eren’s own, and still, the humanoid chiropteran is in agony.

“You’re tired.” Armin murmurs, and his blue, blue eyes are calm and gentle as they bore into Eren’s own. “Go back to sleep. I won’t let anyone disrupt your rest again.”

Eren doesn’t want to, but he can’t fight his body’s urge to fall into his deep sleep. Another twenty-three years without seeing Armin or Mikasa sounds awful, but Eren knows it will go by in a blink.

For Armin and Mikasa, they will spend over two decades in a somewhat dormant state together, waiting for the day their friend will awaken again so they can continue the hunt for Levi. Eren doesn’t know where they will keep him while he sleeps, but he trusts that he won’t be used as a mindless weapon again, not after the events of this night.

“Tell them I’m sorry.” Eren says. He can hear gunfire in the distance, the screams of the damned. The humans will have to continue to fight the chiropterans without his assistance.

“I will.” Armin leans down to press his lips to Eren’s bloody forehead, and blue-green eyes flutter closed. He doesn’t have the strength to open them again, but it’s all right. He’s content to spend his last wakeful moments in the embrace of his best friend, surrounded by his warmth and scent, filled to the brim with memories of their boyhood spent roaming the grounds of Erwin’s estate by day and huddling together in Eren’s bed by night, whispering about the future and the oceans they would see together.

They did see the ocean eventually, Eren recalls, but that was back in 1910, many years after Levi escaped and Erwin was killed. They were on a mission, and Eren’s wanderlust had left him by then. The water only reminded him of the innocence he had lost, the innocence his older brother had stolen from him.

Despite his Chevalier’s soothing presence, Eren falls asleep filled with anger.


End file.
